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Test 4 Mrs. Miracle's Music Room

October 02, 2014

Variety in assessment

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My district has been focusing on formative assessment strategies for years, and for that,  I am very grateful. We as teachers have been provided with tons of professional development about the topic of assessment, with strategies to gauge understanding and adapt instruction. One "a-ha" moment I had on my own, though, without reading an article or hearing anything about it at a meeting, is the idea of variety. While I had heard about providing various formative and summative assessments to students, my "a-ha" moment was about the purpose of variety. The purpose for variety be…

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September 12, 2014

Five Teaching Tips for Music Centers

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Even though I've been doing centers for a few years, I am still learning how most effectively to run a centers lesson in my music room. I've written a few blog posts about centers, which you can read here , but thought I'd offer five tips for doing centers in your music classroom. #1: Think about noise This week, I've been using materials from my fourth grade centers set, shown below: Two of the centers--the solfa manipulatives center and the instruments center--depend on students being able to hear. Here are a couple pictures of these centers: I knew they both involved being able …

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August 21, 2014

Thoughtful Discussions in Music Class

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This past summer, I was fortunate enough to take a class through my district about making thinking visible. We use the word "think" a lot, but it wasn't until this class that I really thought about what thinking means! While I'm not an expert in the area of making thinking visible, I'm going to write about a discussion I had with my first and second graders that I found very insightful. When I took this course, I read the book "Making Thinking Visible." The book can be viewed on Amazon by clicking on the picture below. It is a wonderful read! While I read many of…

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August 05, 2014

My Music Room Set-Up`

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Today I am very excited to blog about my music room set-up for this year! (Thanks to Dancing Crayon Designs , KG fonts , and Sassy Designs for the cute fonts and graphics!) So this year, since our school-wide theme is "Out of this world," I decided to do a space-themed classroom. After making that decision, I got to work and created a space-themed music classroom set, which you can view by clicking on the picture below: I found a seller on Etsy that makes really cute out-of-the-world signs. Here is my sign I will be posting outside my room: Isn't it cute?? You can order one for yours…

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July 29, 2014

Bulletin Board Ideas

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Today I'm excited to link up with David Row from Make Moments Matter, for his Back to School Bulletin Board Ideas in the Music Classroom Linky Party! I'm going to post some of my past bulletin boards. Here goes! #1: Music around the world I used this bulletin board to post any songs we learned from around the world. For example, when we learned "Ye Toop Doram" from Afghanistan, I posted a slip of paper with the title of the song, with yarn tied to a pushpin, which was pointing to Afghanistan. When learning songs from the United States, I figured out exactly which state the song…

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July 22, 2014

10 Strategies for Melodic Reading and Writing

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A few days ago, I wrote about 10 strategies for rhythmic reading and writing , in hopes of giving you ideas for your year plan. Today I will blog about 10 strategies for melodic reading and writing! As in the last blog post, some of the ideas I will describe in this blog post, some will link to other blog posts, and some will link to freebies and other products. Here goes! #1: Ghost Melodies In this blog post , I wrote about how to do ghost melody composition on dry erase boards. This is a great precursor to having students listen for and begin writing specific pitches, like sol and mi. #2: Staff …

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